The first line of defense against rodents carrying hantaviruses is to make your home and work areas unattractive to them. Rodents take advantage of woodpiles, dense brush and vegetation adjacent to homes, and create entry holes into houses for food and protection. Inside buildings they take advantage of protective cover provided by crawlspaces and by soft fabrics and debris that can be used as bedding. They will eat pet food that has been left out at night. By reducing their access to harborage, closing entry holes, and removing food sources, you may be able to keep rodents out of your home. If the rodents infest a building anyway, it is best to trap or poison them, earlier rather than later. Only "snap traps" that kill the rodent are recommended, since use of live traps can actually increase one's exposure to infectious aerosols.
Wild rodents are the carriers of viruses associated with hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, not house mice. For this reason, there are no cases of HPS that have been linked to exposures in highly urban environments, such as central portions of major cities. In urban environments, house mice replace deer mice and other wild rodents. However, wild rodents may be prevalent in suburban settings or where there is adjacent grassy or forested habitat. Furthermore, in some inner cities commensal rats (Rattus rattus and R. norvegicus) are capable of transmitted the Seoul hantavirus, which causes a less lethal but sometimes severe form of hemorrhagic fever (ref). As noted in the molecular epidemiology section, other risk factors may apply in specific settings such as nosocomial (in-hospital) exposure to infected patients (in Argentina only).
If confronted with a rodent infested space that must be cleaned, you should check with your local or state department of health for current guidelines . It is extremely important that you do not generate aerosols that may be contaminated, such as by vacuuming or briskly sweeping rodent droppings. It is also important that the space must first be ventilated, that you wear latex gloves, and that you decontaminate the rodent droppings and nests with a detergent or 10% bleach solution (ref). The droppings should be thoroughly wet from the cleansing solution before removal with a damp towel or mop. Dead rodents should be treated in the same manner but the carcass should be double-bagged in plastic baggies before disposal.
